I was so impressed by this piece that today’s blog is devoted to it. Ken Robinson proposes that the philosophical basis of our current educational system is outdated…
What do you think?
Networks work
It’s the received wisdom in business these days, and especially those businesses involved in personal relationships such as consulting, that networking is absolutely critical. Well here is a little story that really demonstrated to me the value of the networks.
I happen to be a trustee/director of a small community organisation involved in using the creative arts to engage more disaffected and disadvantaged members of the community. Now this is a sector that is under considerable pressure at the moment-firstly from reduced grants and other income opportunities and secondly (and this is almost certainly related to the first point) to the need to become ever more effective in managing the limited resources we have available. Now this latter point is of considerable interest to me it’s one reason why I was recruited in the first place so that the company could draw on my expertise.
We have been running the charity for the last four months without a chief executive and as board members shortly need a discussion of whether or not we can continue to operate without a single head honcho. Now the received wisdom is that any organisation needs a single individual heading up that organisation who can be held accountable for everything that it does and also take the lead on behalf of the organisation when necessary. But does this model necessarily apply to a small third sector organisation (we have 8 staff) in these changing times? We want our charity to both successful and a role model for others. And so we will be exploring the possibilities around how to lead and manage whilst leaving the trustee/directors to provide the proper governance role.
Now the networking story. As you might imagine I have an extensive network of colleagues that I could call on for advice. So I wrote to about 30 of them seeking their views on the situation. Within 24 hours I have 13 responses, including a couple from people I do not know who had been passed my original e-mail by my primary contact. The majority, serve up the conventional wisdom that we need someone at the top, however the four of them have offered different perspectives on how we might run the organisation and some have even offered their personal help in sorting it out. Remember, that this is after only 24 hours!
I have been genuinely astonished by the speed of the calibre of the responses I have received from my network, and from second order links. Evidence, if it were, of the value of a clearly worded request to clearly selected individuals from the network. I would not have dreamt of sending an e-mail to the hundreds of people in my address list, perhaps the few receive things so infrequently that they recognise its significance and act on it. This does go slightly against the grain of some networkers-I am in the network worth one or two people who sent me e-mails almost daily. They are shortly to be deleted from my network on the basis that I get so much from that I can pay little or no attention to any of it.
So, what’s the message? Well, nurture your networks, treat them with respect, feed them appropriately so that when you need something from then they will respond as brilliantly as mine on this occasion.
Thank you to everyone who has helped so far. What practical stories can you tell about your networks?
The habit of learning
I, along with many colleagues in the profession often encourage coaching clients to start a learning diary. There is plenty of evidence out there that if we spend a few minutes every day sitting down reflecting on what has happened to us, trying to make sense of it and deciding how that is going to affect our future actions then we will become more effective in our lives generally. Strangely enough most clients do not actually do this, despite our exhortations, even though they will happily act on advice from other people on saving for a pension or what qualifications to study for next.
Then I started reflecting on what I had learned at school, that 2+2 = 4, that the French for The Sun is Le Soleil, that acids turn litmus paper red and lots of other facts. I do not recall ever once, in that alleged hotbed of learning, being asked to keep a learning diary. Yet there I was surrounded by teachers who, in principle, are familiar with the works of Piaget and Kolb yet don’t seem to want to pass that information on to the students. (There is a separate discussion about whether the teachers really understood these learning theories, or whether they regarded them purely as theory with no practical value!Perhaps that is the paradigm repeating itself?)
I recall someone asking me shortly after I completed my Masters degree what was the most important thing that I learned. Well, that masters degree was in change management and I learned loads and loads of change management theory but I remain convinced that the single most important thing I learned in two years was that when handling change one must start where one is. This very practical piece of advice came from trying to use the various management theories in my work as a change leader and realising that none of them actually recognise that the real world was not as pure as the theoretical world in which they had been formulated.
I recall a colleague on that masters course who was daunted by the reading list; he needed to sit down with one of the tutors and be taught that it was not necessary to read a text book from cover to cover, but that it was okay to work from the contents list and the first few paragraphs of each chapter to identify those parts of the book that might be particularly relevant. He, nor indeed I, had not been taught this at school and certainly for me the lack of instruction in learning how to learn led to a major disconnect when I went from the structured instructional environment of a grammar school to the unstructured find-your-own way environment at the University with the results that I failed my first year and subsequently the degree. My grammar school thought that all I needed to learn was a load of facts, not how to learn.
So to go back to school. My question to you is what do you think is the most important thing for young people to learn at school? You will no doubt have your own answer, mine is that every young person needs to learn how to learn and to acquire the habit of learning
In much of our lives we acquire learning passively and collect habits good and bad without really thinking about how those habits have developed. But how would it be if Boeing designed an aeroplane passively, or an engineer designed a bridge passively? No, they actively learn about how to be more effective at designing aeroplanes and bridges by studying the successes and failures of themselves and others.
So let’s apply this discipline more widely in our lives. Let’s take five or 10 min at the end of every day to reflect upon what happens to us that day, perhaps the most significant incidents or the unusual ones. Write it down and write down what actually happened and how you felt abou;t it think about how it was the same as or different from your previous experiences and feelings and write that down; work out how it fits with your current understanding of the world (or not) and whether it might be necessary to change your opinion or understanding in order to fit this real new experience into your world; then finally work out some way of testing this new world map and using this new knowledge
Your learning diary and the habit of learning may well turn out to be the most valuable 10 minutes you spend every day of your life. Actively acquire the habit of learning. Do let me know how you find your experience of writing a learning diary.
The breakfast of champions
All the recent media coverage of Wikileaks, Vince Cable’s indiscretions, a recent reminder of the Gordon Brown ‘bigot moment’ and those of footballer’s wives left me thinking about standards of behaviour in those who are perceived as leaders/role models.
It seems to me that what is lacking here is straightforward integrity. I quite like the following definition:
Integrity as a concept has to do with perceived consistency of actions, values, methods, measures, principles, expectations and outcome.
I want/need to know that when my boss says something she means it and will not express a different opinion to someone else behind my back. Anyone with pretentions to leadership surely needs consistency as one of their core attributes. Over a long career there was many a time when I disagreed with my various bosses, but the better ones were consistent and also respected my right to disagree. If your boss wants you to jump off the end of the pier (or indeed you want your followers to do so!) then I need to be confident that they are asking it becasue they really cannot see any alternative not because it feeds some personal agenda of their own.
By being duplicitous she is not only undermining my own and others’ belief in them but also setting up tensions in their own brain. It’s a bit like the idea that it’s easier to tell the truth than a lie, because then you only have to remember the truth instead of which lies you told to whom.
I have heard the line a few time recently “Well, haven’t we all at some time or another whispered under our breaths or out of earshot of the subject that they area a bit of a ******” Well, some say that such a comment lost the last election for Labour, that and unguarded comment could well lose Vince Cable his Cabinet post… What I say is that one of my guiding principles been “if you are not prepared to say it to their face then don’t say it behind their backs”
So next time you find yourself commenting on someone’s behaviour behind their backs, perhaps you could ask yourself “Am I prepared to say this to their face?” If the answer is “No” then perhaps you need to question yourself about what’s stopping you – after all, feedback is the breakfast of champions and isn’t it part of a leader’s job to grow champions?
You can only join the dots looking backwards
I have just been reading an address by Steve Jobs to Stanford University and was especially struck by this quote:
…you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.
Perhaps the more academically inclined amongst us might call this ‘post-hoc rationalisation’
It’s certainly my experience that I can often string a convincing story together about what happened despite those happenings being unplanned. Now what I am about to say may well be blasphemous to those who worship at the altar of Change Management Theory (and I too have a Masters’ degree in the topic!) but in many years of leading change I do not think I have ever seen a successful change process follow any of these theories. Oh yes, in general it pays to create your Compelling Vision before your Guiding Coalition – and sometimes the other way round!
Shortly after finishing my Masters my then boss asked “What was the most significant thing you learned on the course?” My response seemed trite at the time, yet the more experience I gathered, the more significant it became. I was fortunate that I was leading the process facilitation team for a major organisational change effort whilst I was doing my Masters and my response was that “I have learned that practice is more important than theory and that in practice you have to do what you can, where you can, when you can”.
I once wrote a paper that described in wondefully rational terms how our long-term success (over a 10-15 year period) could be attributed to overlapping cycles of change, each starting before the full benefits of the previous cycle had been realised. It was pure post-hoc rationalisation – the paper implied some form of ‘master plan’ which never existed. We did what we could where we could when we could. We joined up the dots looking backwards.
So than you Steve Jobs for reminding me that all the theory is useful in the planning phase of change and also for reminding me of the reality that things rarely (ever?) go to plan so although the dots might well join up in retrospect, they are unlikely to make the picture that you thought you were making!
Willkommen in Deutschland
Off for a few days savouring the delights of Germany preparing for Xmas, so bye for now…
Do a bit, learn a bit…
I have spent some of today redesigning the look of this blog, using (if you are interested) a very handy design creation tool called Artisteer. It now looks different to how it looked at 10:00 or at 12:00 or even at 14:00 – and may well look different again before the end of the day! “So what?” you might ask, and quite rightly so. Well, I realised that this redesign was a bit, actually quite a lot, like redesigning how we live.
I started with a recognition that something needed to change – maybe different fonts, maybe layout etc… – wondered how to go about making the changes, sought out a tool to help me then started playing with the tool, all along being aware that my fisrt efforts would take time whilst I learned how to make the change then knowing that I could change things bit by bit and review the results before finally committing; even then I know that further changes can be made – and that small changes can be done quickly and easily.
So, what has this got to do with a personal development blog? Well, it stuck me that there are some very similar lessons:
- Sometimes we just have a feeling that ‘something needs to change’, without being really sure what
- Sometimes we struggle alone before realising that someone else might be able to help
- Sometimes we have to change several things at once, yet other times we can simplify it and make one change at a time
- Some changes are easy, some take more practice
- Sometimes we make a change only to find that it’s still not quite right and needs further adjustment
- When we think we have finished, we have not finished – there is always more to do.
So, back to the title of this piece “Do a bit, learn a bit”. It is only when we actually make a change that we find out whether or not it is an appropriate change. Those changes can be quite small yet have a profound effect. Go on, make a change in your life today…
Taking responsibility
I was speaking with a wonderful, educated, passionate, articulate homeless man this morning.
Firstly, the discussion reminded me that you don’t have to be (to use a non-PC term) the ‘dregs of society’ to become homeless these days.
Then I asked “So what was it that helped you take those first steps back out of the hole you were in?” His response is a lesson for many. His reply was telling:
“I decided that I had to take responsibility for myself”.
This wonderful man recognised, even in the depths of despair, that it was up to him and him alone to accept his part in his past. Yes, others had their part to play in his past and his ‘downfall’; Yes, he would and did accept help from others; and most of all, Yes he could and would take personal responsibility in preference to blaming others. He is far from where he wants to be, yet he is also far from where he was – the journey is long and hard and he knows that only he can make the journey. I wished him well before I went off to my warm home, wonderful wife, well stocked pantry…
So my challenge is for you to answer these two questions:
- “To what extent are you prepared to accept that you have you contributed to any problems in your life?”
- “Are you going to take responsibility for yourself, your past and your future – or do you want to be comfortable and blame others?”
No regrets
When I am coaching face-to-face I often finish with a story – they are intended to be metaphorical and designed so that the subject can make their own sense of them. However, every now and again, one story sticks with me personally – this piece, usually accredited to Nadine Stair aged 85, is one:
If I had my life over…
I’d dare to make more mistakes next time
I’d relax, I’d limber up
I would be sillier than I have been this trip
I would take fewer things seriously
I would take more chances
I would take more trips
I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers
I would eat more ice cream and less beans
I would perhaps have more actual troubles but I’d have fewer imaginary ones
You see I am one of those people who live sensibly and sanely hour after hour, day after day
Oh, I’ve had my moments and if I had to do it over again I would have more of them,
in fact I’d try to have nothing else – just moments.
One after another instead of living so many years ahead of each day
I’ve been one of those people who never go anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat and a parachute
If I had to do it again, I would travel lighter next time
If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall
I would go to more dances
I would ride more merry go rounds
I would pick more daisies.
Ms Stair’s tale reminds us that it is not the things we have done that we will regret but the things we have not done.
So here’s the challenge, to have a quick think about how many days have gone past with you (me) regretting what you have not done? Then take action. What is there that you want to do but have yet to fulfil? Make a plan. Go and do it.
What is cluttering up your brain?
Just how much mess is cluttering up your brain?
Perhaps what I really want to explore is the effect of all those little unfinished jobs that are running around in your brain and occasionally pop out at unexpected, and maybe even unwelcome, moments. You know – that little voice inside your head that says “You never sent Auntie Ethel a birthday card” or “Whatever happened to that memorial bench you were going to buy for your dad?”. Those little things to which you committed yourself at some time, yet somehow never seem to have got done – let’s call them Incompletes.
Here’s an exercise – make a list of them. Get out a sheet of paper and a writewith – start writing, one per line, all those little promises, committment, ideas… that you have still to deliver. NB I do not mean the big stuff – “Redecorate the house” or “Build a garage” – but the smaller, realtively easily done stuff as in my earlier examples. Keep writing, most people (me included!) make a rather long list – when you think you have finished, go for a cup of tea and come back and add whatever it is you have remembered whilst making the tea; maybe you can put the list on the fridge or somewhere else handy so that you can add to it as you remember things.
My guess, indeed my experience, is that you will start completing them now you have written them down – and more so if you put them where they are easily visible.
Every one of these tasks has been cluttering up your brain, and stopping it from being as effective as it/you might be. It is as if each little Incomplete was occupying a bit of grey matter, the more incompletes you have, the more grey matter is tied up in unproductive effort. Once you actually do the action, the grey cell is free to concentrate on more pressing (and important?) matters.
So, whatever it was cluttering up your brain, this is a simple little exercise to start to clear the decks for action. Let me know how it goes for you….